Above is a comic that very nicely highlights an aspect of gender roles in our society. While there are many aspects of gender roles and how they effect our society, this comic is looking at the idea of there being things that only women should use and things that only men should use. Sociologists make a clear distinction between the terms sex and gender. Sex refers to one’s biological identity of being male or female while gender refers to the socially learned expectations and behaviors associated with being male or female. Sex is biologically assigned while gender is culturally learned. This comic shows some sort of duck creature coming up with the idea of making makeup for men. This shows how an outsider to our society, in this case an animal, would look at the gender roles we have in place. This creature thinks there isn't makeup for men because no one thought of it yet, when in fact it is because the gender roles in our society say that men can't where makeup because its for girls. Gender differences exist in nearly every social phenomena. From the moment of birth, gender expectations influence how boys and girls are treated. In fact, gender expectations may begin before birth as parents and grandparents pick out pink or blue clothes and toys and decorate the baby’s room with stereotyped gender colors. This evolves into things like men not being allowed to wear makeup because it will make them less of a man.
This comic is going off of the idea of an outside perspective on our society. Here it can be seen through a child who is new to the world and is going through socialization. The adult in the comic is well socialized and sees things like war and soldiers killing each other as a normal part of how the world works. However, when you step back and really look at it (child perspective) soldiers killing each other is and should be seen as something that must be removed from the way our society works. For reasons like this, socialization can be seen as a very bad thing in our world, but socialization only reflects the norms and rules put in place, so the only way that socialization can become a truly positive thing is by changing our norms for the better.
I like the distinction you made there between sex and gender, I didn't know there was a specifically different definition between the two. And I like this because when I first saw it reminded me that this was defiantly an American comic because in other cultures men do where make-up daily, and even in the U.S. the people who we look up to and see all the time on social media do as well. No one on TV doesn't have make-up on, not even the males. So in some circumstances we forget or turn a blind eye to these contradictions to our view on what is feminine or not. We live in a world full of contradictions that no one seems to know what to do with. And as the comic there socialization does take an extremely big part of our lives. Yet because we are so submerged in the routine of our lives, its hard to take a step back to realize what we are doing daily might not be in the betterment for the our society. As the kid who questions his parents, someone who is not fully socialized into our society, or the animal friend, their distance from our standards as a society gives them an ability to look critically on the way we live, something we have to learn how to be able to do in order to change the way we view the world, and the people who reside in it.
ReplyDeleteI really like that you used Calvin and Hobbes as one of your comics. Calvin and Hobbes is one of my favorite comic strips because it has a lot of social commentary in it. I do not know how to post a image in a comment, but here is a link to another one about war. It has a similar message about how war has become normalized in our society.
ReplyDeletehttp://4.bp.blogspot.com/_94jnaoIgEs0/TUkPN5Xx5fI/AAAAAAAAAQo/pbOr48G-Qds/s1600/Calvin-And-Hobbes-Comic-Strip-calvin--26-hobbes-70617_950_668.jpg